Portugal’s Health Minister, Paulo Macedo, claimed this weekend that the health needs of the population have been met during the economic recession.
Portugal's health service also has managed to improve health indicators, despite budgetary restrictions, said Macedo at a conference in Sabrossa, Vila Real this weekend.
"In health, as in the rest of the country we are not in an entirely normal situation, we went through a deep crisis from which we are to exit, with growth that is positive but that still is faint," according to the minister.
Macedo said that during the crisis period there are 'clearly restrictions' and it was never possible to have the health budget that we would like, but he stressed that "it was possible to meet the needs of the Portuguese through the longest ever crisis."
It was also possible, according to the minister, “to have better health indicators in multiple areas, for example in life expectancy, in infant mortality and, hopefully, in the number of tuberculosis cases.”
"Multiple health indicators improved despite the biggest crisis ever, but we can never ignore the real problems we have," he stressed.
At the end of a period marked by layoffs in hospitals, Paulo Macedo pointed out that this week the government had doubled the network of palliative care beds and had signed the contract with a pharmaceutical company that will allow the treatment of patients with hepatitis C.
These are area where the government has "an investment of dozens and dozens of millions of euros.”
"This does not give (...) those responsible, service directors, team heads, boards of directors, an easy time, on the contrary, they have a very difficult task."
